Summertime Mistletoe
by kismet-wayfinder
Summary: "Do you know what love is?" Roxas asked of Axel, to which he replied, "'Scuse me?" Axel knew pretty much everything, but as for love? Well, Roxas decided that he was going to figure this one out with or without his help. slightAkuRokuShi. Axel/Roxas/Xion


_**Axel – Roxas - Xion | oneshot | friendship/romance**_

summertime mistletoe.

_Was it really that difficult of a concept? _Roxas wondered to himself as he sliced through the last of the Shadows around him, drawing his mission of collecting Hearts to a close for that day. _Love – you don't more about it, Axel? Really? _he kept thinking to himself.

Then sighing as he let his keyblade vanish from his hand, the blond-haired young man cloaked in black gave a bit of a shrug and mused aloud, "Can't blame the guy, really – love has to do with hearts, right? The one thing we . . . _supposedly_ don't have. Whatever."

Dragging his feet a bit as he moseyed on down the brick road that led from the train station toward the portal where he could RTC, Roxas felt a bit of a breeze pass by him along with a strange, rustling sort of sound. "That doesn't sound like another Heartless to me," he murmured, puckering his lips a bit as he furrowed his brow and paused, glancing around.

"A_ha_!" he said seconds later as he looked downward, eyes falling upon what looked like a bit of newspaper that had blown across his path and brushed against his shoe during the breeze; leaning down, he picked it up and raised his eyebrows first, before leaning his head over to the side.

The newspaper wasn't really a flier at all, as it so turned out, but a piece of a manga story that seemed to have been ripped out from some magazine or some other sort of booklet. On one side there could be seen a splashscreen of events that really made no sense to Roxas – he'd never tried to follow this story in this magazine, after all.

But when Roxas flipped it over to the other side, he blinked, his eyes falling upon the sight of a drawing of two characters caught up in an embrace. A tall, lanky boy character had his arms wrapped around the waist of a much shorter, skirt and stocking clad girl, whose arms were - in turn - hung around his neck. Up above them hung a plant of some sort.

"Mistletoe?" Roxas read the caption beside the image of said plant aloud, before shaking his head for he'd never heard of it before.

But what really caught his attention most was the fact that the boy and girl had their lips pressed together, almost as if locked or something. Their eyes were closed, the tips of their noses were brushing and they just looked so . . . _happy_ together. His eyes glancing up toward the block-letter caption above the drawing, he was able to read the phrase _"Forever in Love"_.

"_This_ is love?" Roxas wondered aloud, noting the little markings beside the characters' faces, which said _*kiss*, *kiss*._ "A kiss? Seems familiar somehow but I know I've never given one, er, or gotten one, either . . . but so – a kiss is love? Er, a kiss _shows_ love?"

Flipping the paper back over, Roxas glanced at the date. It had evidently originally had a Christmastime printing. _Still, so what, right? _he thought.

Shaking his head and feeling more confused than ever, Roxas folded the manga page up in a quite tiny way and slipped it into a pocket. He then headed for a round of shopping – something he _never_ cared to do, unless it was just to get ice cream. But now he had an idea in his mind that he didn't want to let go. He'd get it through Axel's head if he could; after all, Axel shared all the wisdom he ever had all the time with he and Xion up on the clock tower, didn't he? Maybe it was now Roxas's turn to try to share in return.

**. . . . . . . .**

Roxas felt a bit nervous later on that same evening, now as he stood atop the clock tower, leaning back rather than sitting down on its ledge. He was waiting for Axel and Xion to show up, sometimes glancing from side to side, anxious. The sun was setting and setting fast. Oh where _were they_?

"Careful now, Xion – don't trip," Axel's voice said from a short distance away. "I've never tried to figure out how far down the ground is from up here but, uh, I'm not wanting to find out anytime soon."

"Yeah, me neither," Xion replied with a bit of a chuckle, and then soon her shoes were turning the corner, followed closely behind by Axel. "Oh – Roxas – you're here already!"

Roxas felt a warm feeling resonate within the core of his chest upon noticing the way Xion's bright, blue eyes lit up when she caught sight of him, her short black hair a bit wind-tousled as she offered him a smile. "Axel and I already got the ice cream."

"That's great," he said to her, giving her a crooked grin. "I've got something for you guys too."

"Oh, do you?" Axel asked, running his long fingers back through his even longer, flaming red locks of wild hair; a grin was playing at the corner of his own mouth, his body leaning over to the side of the wall, arms folding over his chest. "Well let's have it then. After all, if we wait too long, the ice cream'll melt."

"That's true . . ." Roxas said, moving a closed fist to brush over his mouth in a nervous fashion, stifling an equally nervous chuckle as he tucked one foot behind his other.

"Well go on – Axel told you to _show us_ already, Roxas!" Xion exclaimed, balling her own hands into fists before placing them against her sides. "What's up?"

"Er . . . _this_," Roxas said, moving a hand from behind his back to slowly lift up a little plant looking thing. "This is mistletoe. I sorta-kinda read about it today and uh, it got me to thinking about something that I'd been talking to Axel about before, Xion."

"What were you talking about?" she asked with great interest, un-balling her hands as she reached forward to take the mistletoe from him, to get a better look at it.

"Love," Roxas said simply, catching Axel's eye, noticing a strange red flush come across the bridge of his nose and cheeks. "I mean, Axel seemed to not know what it is in any exact form or fashion, but then today I found this cartoon or comic or something – I think it made me understand it better."

"Well, what happened in the comic, Roxas?" Xion asked, leaning in toward him curiously.

Growing a bit red in the face, the blond haired young Nobody leant forward a bit and took hold of Xion by the wrist, before gently raising it – along with the mistletoe she held – up above both their heads. Once it was in place, he leant in and brushed his lips ever so softly against her own, before pulling away and searching her face for a reaction as she looked back at him, almost appearing stunned, red patches on her face as well now.

"And . . . Axel . . ." Roxas then said, taking the mistletoe from Xion's hand and then leaning up on his tiptoes to try to hold it over their heads as well; once he'd done the best he could, he quickly leant forward and pressed his lips to Axel's and then pulled away, rocking back onto the flat soles of his shoes quietly.

"Roxas . . ." Xion murmured; he looked over to her, finding her standing there with a hand against her cheek. "What was that exactly, what you did just now?"

"It's called a kiss. It's what you do to people when you love them . . . I _think_," Roxas answered her, before scratching at the back of his head awkwardly. "Right, Axel?"

Smirking, the green-eyed Nobody folded his arms over his chest and glanced down toward his shoes for a moment. "No . . . I don't think love _is_ kissing."

"Oh . . ." Roxas said quietly, his face falling.

"It's okay, Roxas," Xion said kindly as she stood behind him, reaching forward to take hold of his hand. "I mean . . . _hehe_ . . . I _liked_ the, the kiss."

"Me, too," he murmured, though he still looked crestfallen at somehow missing the point of so-called love.

Reaching a hand forward suddenly, Axel placed his palm against Roxas's chest, right over where his heart would be. Smiling he said, "The kisses - when you gave them to me and Xion, you felt something right here, didn't you, Roxas?"

Nodding his head, Roxas said, "Well yeah, it made me feel kind of weird and warm inside but in a good way, you know?" He then glanced upward at Axel and added, "Did you feel the same thing?"

"Yeah – it felt like I had a fluttering, er, _heart_, really; that's what it felt like when you kissed me just now. And I'm guessing that Xion . . .?"

"Yeah, I felt the same thing, Axel – Roxas – it was like this crazy, sporadic little burst inside. Right, right here . . ."

Turning to glance back at Xion, Roxas saw that she was holding her free hand right over her own bosom; he smiled and then looked back to Axel once more.

"The feeling _from the kiss_ – not the kiss itself, Roxas – that's, I'm thinking, what the love is."

"The feeling . . ." Roxas repeated back, before smirking in a crooked sort of way and then leaning backward to rest against Xion, Xion who turned her face aside slightly and brushed her mouth against his cheek while Axel leant his head down and simultaneously placed a kiss on Roxas's forehead.

Feeling the burst of warmth where he figured his heart would be - now two times over and then some - Roxas finally felt quite certain that he'd nailed this mystery for once and for all, this thing called love.

Mistletoe not required.


End file.
